Marion Kirkland Reid

Marion Kirkland Reid (25 March 1815 – 9 March 1902) was a Scottish feminist writer, notable for her A Plea for Woman which was first published in 1843 in Edinburgh by William Tait, then published in the United States in 1847, 1848, 1851, and 1852 as Woman, her Education and Influence under the name of Mrs. Hugo Reid. She was a member of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts.

Quotes

A Plea for Woman (1843)

• We shall be disposed to acknowledge that woman's influence has been sufficient to obtain her justice, when it has obtained for her ... perfectly just and equal rights with the other sex. When this is the case, we shall expect to see each woman wakened up into a sense of her individual responsibilities and duties: finding herself no longer classed with children and idiots, we may reasonably expect to see her rousing herself up, and applying, with renewed energy, to all her duties ...
  • Ch. 2
  • Cf. Catherine Carswell, "I have found that men, ..."

• No pure and noble-minded woman can long love affectionately, and submit passively to, a vicious and dissipated, — or even to a good and virtuous tyrant, — without having her own mind greatly deteriorated.
  • Ch. 3

• To leave the liberty of one-half of the human race at the mercy of the convenience of the other, amounts to an annihilation of the rights of that half.
  • Ch. 5

• ... are puddings and pies, roasting and boiling, dusting and washing, or even the rearing and educating her children, so entirely to engross her attention, that her heart and mind can never expand beyond her own little domestic circle? Nay, if her mind never does so expand, will she be able properly to regulate the concerns even of that little circle?
  • Ch. 6

• The grand plea for woman sharing with man all the advantages of education is, that every rational being is worthy of cultivation, for his or her own individual sake. The first object in the education of every mind ought to be its own development.
  • Ch. 10
  • Cf. Frances Wright, "Oh! then, let us gird up our minds in courage, ..."

• ... the influence of woman — where any freedom of social intercourse is allowed between the sexes — is highly favourable to civilisation. She advances refinement and civilisation, and is, in turn, advanced by them.
  • Ch. 11

• ... if we take politics in the large and high sense in which it stands for patriotism and philanthropy, the assertion that an interest in it is out of place in the breast of the very gentlest of her sex, — in other words, that it is improper and unbecoming in a woman to take a deep interest in the affairs of her country and of humanity, — is made with more boldness and confidence, than regard to reason and truth.
  • Ch. 11

External links

• Angela Cran; David Robertson (eds.), Dictionary of Scottish Quotations (Mainstream Publishing, 1996), p. 280